"I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he, and she told him that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one, would not even open his door to take in food.
Ste. Marie went to the stairs, leaning upon the shoulder of the stout old Justine, but, before he had gone, Coira checked him for an instant. She said—
"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note I gave him last night, I meant quite seriously. I gave him a note to read after he reached home. Tell him for me that it was final. Will you do that?"
"Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie. He looked at her with some wonder because her words had been very emphatic.
"Yes," he said, "I will tell him. Is that all?"
"All but good-bye," said she. "Good-bye, Bayard!"
She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them. And she came after him to the landing halfway where the stairs turned in the opposite direction for their lower flight. When he went out of the front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him—a straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind her.
He went straight to the Rue d'Assas. He found that while he sat still in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy, and he would have fallen had he been standing.
The familiar streets of the Montparnasse and Luxembourg quarters had for his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh. He was much relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he could slip unobserved up the stairs and into his rooms. The rooms were fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.
Arrived there he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor and lived in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as soon as it might be convenient. He sent the note by the chauffeur, and then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or move about without a painful dizziness. The doctor came within a half-hour, examined Ste. Marie's bruised head and bound it up. He gave him a dose of something with a vile taste, which he said would take away the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping potion, and made him go to bed.